Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of
the most important public intellectuals of our time… He offers us new
ways of thinking about law, democracy and power. He allows us to reflect
upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we
least expect them.”
-Angela Davis

Revolutionary love,
revolutionary memory and revolutionary analysis are at work on every
page written by Mumia Abu-Jamal…His writings are a wake-up call. He is a
voice from our prophetic tradition, speaking to us here, now, livingly,
urgently. Black man, old-school jazz man, freedom fighter,
revolutionary—his presence, his voice, his words are the writing on the
wall.”
– Cornel West

“When you listen to Mumia Abu-Jamal you
hear the echoes of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois,
Paul Robeson, and the sisters and brothers who kept the faith with
struggle, who kept the faith with resistance.”
– Manning Marable

Writing
on the Wall presents a selection of more than 100 previously
unpublished essays spanning the entire period of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s
incarceration that crystallize his essential perspectives on community,
politics, protest, history, social change and movement organizing in the
U.S. and internationally. From discussions of Rosa Parks and Trayvon
Martin, to Martin Luther King and Edward Snowden, Abu-Jamal articulates
lucid, humorous, and often prescient insight into the past, present and
future of American politics and society.

This book and this
event could not be more timely, relevant and provocative.Presenting
Mumia’s thoughts and discussing them will be Angela Davis, Johann
Fernández, and Walter Turner.

Angela Davis is an American
political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent
progressive activist and a leader in the Communist Party USA. She worked
with the Black Panther Party, and was heavily involved in America’s
Civil Rights Movement, particularly prisoner rights. She founded
Critical Reistance.

Johanna Fernández, the editor of Writing on
the Wall, is a former Fulbright Scholar to Jordan.Currently Assistant
Professor of History at City University of New York, she is the writer
and producer of the film Justice on Trial: The Case for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Professor Walter Turner, College of Marin Social Sciences
Professor, is also host and producer of the weekly Pacifica Radio
program Africa Today, airing Monday evenings on KPFA Radio 94.1FM.

KPFA benefit

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Sunday, March 20: National March

to Support Palestine in D.C.!

On
Sunday, March 20, 2016, there will be a major National March on
Washington, D.C., to support Palestine and the Palestinian people. Stand
with Palestine, say NO to the racist reign of terror and the Apartheid
Wall, and say YES to the right of Palestinian refugees to return home.

Buses
are being reserved and organized. Transportation centers are being set
up in cities up and down the East Coast and in the Midwest. We expect
people from every region to descend on Washington, D.C.

The
National March and Rally is timed to coincide with the opening of the
AIPAC Convention in downtown Washington, D.C. We will gather in front of
the White House for a rally at 12 Noon. At 1:00 pm we will march to the
D.C. Convention Center, the site of the AIPAC (American Israeli Public
Affairs Committee) conference.

Al-Awda, The Palestinian Right to
Return Coalition and the ANSWER Coalition are co-sponsoring the National
March on March 20 (#‎SupportPalestineInDC2016). We are expecting
hundreds of organizations and individual leaders to endorse this
activity and join the effort!
What you can do:

1. Become an endorser of this important national action
http://www.answercoalition.org/endorse_the_national_march_to_support_palestine?utm_campaign=palestine_0108&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

3. Sign up if you can help bring other people from your area to Washington on March 20
http://www.answercoalition.org/organize_transportation_to_the_national_march_on_washington_to_support_palestine?utm_campaign=palestine_0108&utm_medium=email&utm_source=answercoalition

Palestine
is calling and the world must answer. International solidarity can make
the difference, as it did in bringing an end to apartheid in South
Africa. This must be a united effort for justice. We must stand together
to reject the efforts by the Israeli state and settlers to abuse,
violate and evict the Palestinian people. We say NO to racism and YES to
self-determination.

Please join and help bring thousands of people to Washington, D.C., on Sunday, March 20, 2016.

“This conference that we are picketing ... is an obscene reflection of the reality of this country today, that the most important thing is money and profit, and not human needs!”- Carole Seligman,Speaking at the demonstration

It
was in their fancy tailored suits and with suspicious eyes that Big
Pharma CEO’s and investors got interrupted by protestors and speeches
such as the above, as they came and went from the (too-big-to-fail) JP
Morgan-sponsored conference on “health care” (read: profit care) at the
elite Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square in San Francisco on
Monday, the 11th of January 2016.

Public Health Not Corporate Wealth!

Called
out by the OASIS Clinic, a not-for-profit in Oakland CA that
specializes in treating patients with Hepatitis-C, the demonstration was
organized in collaboration with the Labor Action Committee To Free
Mumia Abu-Jamal (LAC) and supported by numerous other groups. Some 70
protestors, including OASIS staff, patients and medical professionals,
marched outside the hotel, as the pharmaceutical investors came and
went, to demand proper treatment for the 3 million victims of Hep-C in
the US, including 700,000 prisoners; and to give the CEOs a warning: we
are watching! Profiteering must stop!

As Carole Seligman,
speaking for Prison Radio and Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal explained, “We know how to feed people who are starving, and
we know how to cure people with hepatitis-C and Aids and many other
diseases, but ... this obscene conference (is about) not how to cure
people, not how to distribute these life saving drugs, but how to make
money! This is obscene... we know how to do it! It does not involve
profit-making!”

Gilead Charges 100 Times It’s Cost for the Hep-C Cure

The
big pharma company Gilead Sciences (based in Foster City, CA) was a
chief target of this action. Gilead is the owner and manufacturer (but
not the developer--that was a company that Gilead bought) of the new
drug, Harvoni, which has a 95 percent cure rate for Hep-C in a 12 (or
more) week treatment of one pill per day. This is a vast improvement
over the previous treatments for Hep-C, but... Gilead charges the
outrageous price of $1,000 per pill for the drug, which costs from
$84,000 to nearly $100,000 for a full curative treatment, or more than
twice what the developing company’s suggested price was. Gilead charges
about 100 times the cost of production of the pill!

We
thought we had induced some indigestion, and sure enough, we had! We
were told by one journalist covering the conference that the
demonstration had really shaken them up. Reaction inside the conference
was immediate. Of course, we (protestors & patients) weren’t allowed
in to hear this, but according to the report, “Drug Makers Dismiss
Outrage Over High Prices As ‘Abomination’,” from Stat News (12 January),
because of our demonstration...

“(It) wasn’t surprising that
during a panel discussion here Monday, a Gilead executive was asked how
he lives with himself. Gregg Alton, the [Gilead Sciences] executive
vice president for corporate and medical affairs, joked that he goes
running. Then his tone turned serious as he talked about research,
innovation, and the value of life-saving new drugs. ‘I sleep quite
well,’ he concluded.”

Anger At Drug Companies is Called ... an “Abomination!”

Even
more outrageous was the following from a conference participant:
“Public anger at drug companies is ‘an abomination’”! The speaker was
Ron Cohen, chairman of the big industry group BIO (allegedly “the
world’s largest biotechnology trade association” https://www.bio.org).
All the talk about pharma profiteering is “a perversion of reality,”
according to Cohen.

Protest is an abomination?! Anger over big
pharma profiteering is a perversion of reality?! The truth is millions
of Hep-C sufferers are being denied the curative treatment because they
cannot afford it, or their health plans refuse to cover it due to its
cost; or because they are prisoners--Mumia Abu-Jamal among them--who are
denied it because prison administrations refuse to supply it until they
are deathly sick! This is an abomination! Health care for all is a
right, but not for these greed-driven big corporate executives!

“Eye-Popping” Price Tags:Big Pharma Price Gouging Runs Amok!

Many
drug makers besides Gillead--Pfizer, Ely Lilly, Amgen, Allergan and
Vanda Pharmaceuticals, among many others--have raised prices recently,
according to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. “And a slew
of new drugs have hit the market with eye-popping price tags: cancer
drugs at more than $11,000 a month; cholesterol drugs at more than
$14,000 a year,” according to the Stat News piece. “Then there’s Martin
Shkreli, the pharma executive who bought up a decades-old drug and hiked
the price 5,000 percent, turning himself into a target of nationwide
protests before he was arrested last month on securities fraud charges.”
(http://www.statnews.com/2016/01/12/public-outrage-drug-prices/)

All
this comes in addition to the already over-the-top high drug prices in
the profit-driven US “health” system, which is more costly than in
virtually any other country! As protest coordinator Jack Heyman pointed
out, “Shrekli should have been arrested for profiteering. But in
capitalist America, profiteering is not illegal.” Where is the
perversion, if not in this system, in which profit is god, and the rest
of us--the working masses--are sacrificed on the altar of corporate
greed?!

Mumia’s Radio Commentary, “Medications for the Money, Not
Patients,” 06 January 2016, deals with the outrageous profiteering of
Gilead Sciences in its pricing for the Hepatitis-C cure. The commentary
was to have been played at the rally, but technical difficulties
prevented it. It can be heard on the Prison Radio site, at:
http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/medications-money-not-patients-221-mumia-abu-jamal

Our Demonstration Was Fired Up

Speakers,
besides Carole Seligman, included Dr Dianne Sylvestre, Executive
Director, and Orlando Chavez and Ana Turetsky of the OASIS Clinic; Dick
Becker of the ANSWER Coalition, which provided the sound system; Gerald
Sanders of the Oscar Grant Committee; Marsha Feinland of the Peace and
Freedom Party; and Robin Roth of the Hep-C Task Force of SF. The Single
Payer Now group, along with numerous others also supported this
demonstration with their signs and banners. Jack Heyman, ILWU
longshoreman (retired) and member of both the Labor Action Committee To
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, led
the demonstration. A video by Labor Video Project can be viewed at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8i7pCEMScw

Angela Davis’ Comment

Former political prisoner Angela Davis, who was on a speaking tour, sent the following message to the demonstration:

“It
is more important than ever to join the campaign both to free Mumia and
to protest the fact that capitalist profit is ranked as far more
important than human health. Mumia ‘s health situation demands that we
take action immediately. As we know, Mumia has Hepatits C – along with
10,000 other prisoners in Pennsylvania and approximately 500,000 all
over the U.S. They are not receiving treatment because the
pharmaceutical companies producing drugs that are capable of curing Hep C
value profit over human health.

Mumia continues to struggle
against [the] prison industrial complex and the larger capitalist
system. It is up to us to Free Mumia and to eventually abolish the
prison industrial complex Free Mumia Free Them all!”

No Execution By Medical Mistreatment!

Mumia
Abu-Jamal, the world’s best-known political prisoner, like 10,000
prisoners in Pennsylvania (where Mumia is incarcerated for a crime he
did not commit), and at least 700,000 other US prisoners, suffers from a
debilitating Hepatitis-C infection which is not being properly treated
by prison administrations.

The LAC’s signs saying “No Execution
By Medical Mistreatment,” referred to the fact that the Pennsylvania
police/prison complex have been trying to kill Mumia since 1981, when
they found him, and shot him almost fatally at a crime scene with which
he had no involvement! On death row and beyond, the authorities have
been trying to kill Mumia. Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell, one of the longest
serving and most brutally treated political prisoners in the US, was set
up and murdered in 2015. This is what they are trying to do to Mumia
now, by medical mistreatment, and if that fails, by other means! Mumia
must be freed from prison!

Support the Prison Radio Legal Fund for Mumia’s Case!

The
LAC linked this struggle with the potentially precedent-setting court
case of Mumia versus the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
(Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes), which seeks injunctive relief for immediate
treatment with the new (Harvoni) curative medication for Hepatitis-C.
Currently, Mumia is being treated with a bogus heat-lamp therapy for his
painful body-wide skin inflammation, while being denied treatment for
the hepatitis, which is the cause of this and all his symptoms.

Mumia
is the first one to point out that prisoners throughout the US are,
like him, not being properly treated for this debilitating and always
fatal disease. A victory for Mumia in this suit could extend a precedent
throughout the prison system. The lawyers for Mumia in this case are
supported through a fund organized by Prison Radio, the organization
which publishes Mumia’s regular commentaries. We urge you to help! Go to
www.prisonradio.org for more information, and to donate.

Mumia Must Be Free!

Like
so many other prisoners, Mumia needs to receive the life-saving cure
for Hep-C. And, as an innocent political prisoner, framed for a crime he
did not commit, he must be free. But like Leonard Peltier and other
political prisoners who are targeted by the state at all its levels,
from local police through state and national politicians and the Justice
Department itself, Mumia needs a mass mobilization and workers’
struggle to free him from this unjust incarceration. In 1995 masses
mobilized to stop the planned execution of Mumia, and in 1999, Oakland
teachers, and West Coast longshore workers set an example by conducting
labor actions to free Mumia, which included the shutting down of all
West Coast ports! Today, with Mumia’s life at stake, labor and the
community need to build a mass mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

SUPPORTERS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL,AND FREE QUALITY HEALTH CARE FOR ALL:The
Oasis Clinic in Oakland, CA, which treats patients with Hepatitis-C
(HCV), demands an end to the outrageous
price-gouging of Big Pharma corporations, like Gilead Sciences, which
hike-up the cost for essential, life-saving medications such as the cure
for the deadly Hepatitis-C virus, in order to reap huge profits. The
Oasis Clinic’s demand is:

URGENT UPDATE: PA JUDGE IMMEDIATELY DISMISSED MAJOR TILLERY'S LAWSUIT AS "FRIVOLOUS." MAJOR WILL FIGHT THIS IN FEDERAL COURT!

MAJOR TILLERY SUES PA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

First Amendment Lawsuit Against Retaliation For Fighting for Medical Treatment For Mumia Abu-Jamal and All Prisoners

Major Tillery, his daughter, Kamillah and his two granddaughters:

Major
Tillery filed a civil rights lawsuit pro se against John Wetzel,
Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC), SCI
Mahanoy Superintendent John Kerestes, SCI Frackville Superintendent
Brenda Tritt and 17 other prison officials. The DOC punished and
retaliated against Tillery for acts of solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal
and other prisoners fighting for the fundamental human right of medical
care. The lawsuit was filed in the Schuylkill County Court of Common
Please on January 5, 2015:This
is a civil rights action brought by Major George Tillery, a 65 year-old
African-American man to stop and remedy retaliation against him for his
exercise of his First Amendment Rights. Tillery was subjected to
numerous retaliatory acts by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
and its employees, including medical neglect and medical mistreatment,
unjustified cell searches, transfer to another cell block, loss of his
prison job and precipitous transfer from SCI Mahanoy to SCI Frackville
and then being set-up with a false misconduct and given over four months
in disciplinary custody (solitary confinement).

This
retaliation was intended to punish and stop Tillery from filing
grievances challenging medical neglect and mistreatment of him and other
prisoners, including the well-known journalist and former death row
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. This retaliation was punishment for Tillery
continuing to publicly advocate for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and to publicly
expose the DOC’s neglect and mistreatment of prisoner’s medical problems
as well as the DOC’s retaliation against Tillery; and continuing to
file grievances objecting to these retaliatory actions by prison
officials.

Throughout his over thirty years in prison serving a
sentence of life without parole, Tillery has challenged his conviction
and sentence, and unconstitutional restrictions on access to courts,
prison conditions including security classification and placement
procedures, medical treatment, and housing conditions on behalf of
himself and other prisoners. He was held in solitary confinement in
super-max institutions in the federal and Pennsylvania prison systems
for over twenty of those years.

Tillery was the lead plaintiff
in Tillery v. Owens, a class action lawsuit filed July 23, 1987,
challenging the constitutionality of the conditions of confinement at
the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh ("SCIP") located in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It started as a pro se legal action by
Tillery. It resulted in an historic legal order requiring remediation of
unconstitutional prison conditions including deficient security, fire
protection, access to the courts, over-crowded housing, medical care,
mental health care and dental services. The DOC was required to make
prison renovations costing more than a million dollars. See Tillery v.
Owens, 719 F.Supp. 1256 (W.D.Pa.1989).

Major Tillery demands
that the DOC stop its retaliation, remove the false misconduct from his
record, provide medical treatment and transfer him out of SCI Frackville
to a different prison in eastern Pennsylvania so he remains near his
family.

This lawsuit is just part of Major Tillery’s fight for
medical care and to protect himself and other prisoners who are standing
up for justice. He has liver disease and chronic Hepatitis C that the
DOC has known about for over a decade. Tillery is filing grievances
against the prison and its medical staff to get the new antiviral
medicine. This is part of the larger struggle to obtain Hep C treatment
for the 10,000 prisoners in Pennsylvania and the estimated 700,000
prisoners nationally who have Hepatitis-C and could be cured.

Major Tillery’s daughter, Kamilah Iddeen appeals for our support:

It
is so important that my Dad filed this lawsuit– it shows what really
goes on inside the prison. Prison officials act as if my father is their
property, that his family doesn’t exist, that he isn’t a man with
people who love him. They lied to us every time we called and said he
needed treatment. They lied and said he hadn’t told them, that he hadn’t
filed grievances. The DOC plays mind games and punishes prisoners who
stand up for themselves and for others. But my Dad won’t be broken.

The
DOC needs to learn they can’t do this to a prisoner and his family.
Justice has to be done. Justice has to be served. Please help.

Call prison officials and demand:--Demand decent medical care for Major Tillery!--Stop
the Retaliation Against Major Tillery. He should be exonerated for the
false charges of drug possession and this misconduct removed from his
record.--Transfer Major Tillery from SCI Frackville back to SCI
Mahanoy or to another facility in eastern Pennsylvania to remain near
his family.Dept. Of Corrections SecretaryJohn Wetzel (717) 728-4109 Superintendent SCI FrackvilleBrenda Tritt (570) 874-4516

Defend Chelsea Manning

Here are two important ways you can support Chelsea:

Attorneys Nancy Hollander and
Vincent Ward are well into the process of preparing for Chelsea's first legal appeal next
year. The appeals process has the potential to take decades off Chelsea's 35 year prison sentence.Donate Today!

Super secret insider info: Not only are Chelsea Manning shirts and stuff already 50% off in our online store, if you use discount code "chelsea"
during check out, you'll get an additional 50% off. That is insane, so
please don't tell anyone else, as we can't afford for this news to get
out too broadly. Here's the link to the store, just for you Bonnie.

Chelsea honored in Advocate's 40 under 40!

"In blogs, tweets, and handwritten letters from prison, the former Army
intelligence specialist is still trying to change the world."

"I often hear and read that many people all over the world consider me a
‘whistleblower’ or a ‘heroine.’ This experience can be a little
intimidating at times," she tells The Advocate. "That’s an idea
that would be a lot to live up to! I don’t feel like I can live up to
the expectations of being a ‘heroine.’ I don’t have any special powers
or abilities like a comic book super hero. I actually feel a lot more
vulnerable than that. In fact, I am very vulnerable. I just try to be
myself, and that’s all I aspire to be.” Read more...

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees!

When Drone Whistleblowers are Under Attack,

What Do We Do?

STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!

We honor Stephan, Michael, Brandon and Cian!

These
four former ex-drone pilots have courageously spoken out publicly
against the U.S. drone assassination program. They have not been
charged with any crime, yet the U.S. government is retaliating against
these truth-tellers by freezing all of their bank and credit card
accounts. WE MUST BACK THEM UP!
Listen to them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28

PLEASE HELP THEM:

1. Sign up on this support network:www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/

**************************************************************
Statement of Support for Drone Whistleblowers
(Code Pink Women for Peace: East Bay, Golden Gate, and S.F. Chapters 11.28.15)

Code
Pink Women for Peace support the very courageous actions of four former
US drone operators, Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland,
and Stephan Lewis, who have come under increasing attack for disclosing
information about “widespread corruption and institutionalized
indifference to civilian casualties that characterize the drone
program.” As truth tellers, they stated in a public letter to President
Obama that the killing of innocent civilians has been one of the most
“devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the
world.”* These public disclosures come only after repeated attempts to
work privately within official channels failed.

Despite
the fact that none of the four has been charged with criminal activity,
all had their bank accounts and credit cards frozen. This retaliatory
response by our government is consistent with the extrajudicial nature
of US drone strikes.

We must support these former drone
operators who have taken great risks to stop the drone killing. Write
or call your US Senators, your US Representatives, President Barack
Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan
demanding that Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, and
Stephan Lewis be applauded, not punished, for revealing the criminal and
extrajudicial nature of drone strikes that has led to so many civilian
deaths.

For more information on the 4 Drone Whistleblowers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28
(Must see Democracy Now interview with the 4 drone operators)

Save Ashraf Fayadh

Palestinian poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

Ashraf
Fayadh, Palestinian refugee poet and artist living in Saudi Arabia, has
been sentenced to death by a Saudi court, on charges of apostasy or
abandoning his faith in Islam. The charges appear to be based on his
poetry and writing and also maybe a form of retaliation for posting an
online video showing Saudi religious police lashing a man in public.

Fayadh
is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Saudi Arabia and has become a
leading member of the young Saudi art scene. He was arrested in January
2014, his identity documents confiscated, and held for a lengthy period
without charge. He was then sentenced to four years in prison and 800
lashes; after he appealed; he was re-tried last month and sentenced to
death. He did not have legal representation.

Fayadh is being
sentenced to death after having been jailed for more than 22 months in
the Saudi city of Abha without clear legal charges beyond “insulting the
Godly self” and having “ideas that do not suit the Saudi society.”
These charges are based on the complaint of a reader’s interpretation of
Fayadh's 2008 poetry collection titled, Instructions Within.

“According
to Fayadh’s friends, when the police failed to prove that his poetry
was atheist propaganda, they began berating him for smoking and having
long hair,” reported the Guardian. Fayadh said his poetry book,
Instructions Within, is “just about me being [a] Palestinian
refugee…about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious
extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”

This
is not the first time that Saudi authorities have arrested Ashraf
Fayadh. The poet was detained before after a Saudi citizen filed a
complaint with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice accusing Fayadh of having “misguided and misguiding
thoughts.” Fayadh was bailed out of jail at the time, only to get
arrested again. According to sources close to Fayadh, the poet has been
denied both visitation and legal representation rights.

Amnesty
international stated, “We condemn these acts of intimidation targeting
Ashraf Fayadh as part of a wider campaign inciting hate against writers
and using Islam to justify oppression and to crush free speech. We
express our solidarity with Fayadh, hoping to increase support for the
poet as well as pressure to release him. Our efforts should come
together to ensure the proliferation of free speech and personal
freedoms. We specifically call on Saudi intellectuals to express
solidarity with Fayadh against Takfiris’ intimidation practices meant to
silence poets, writers, and artists like him. Let the flag of
creativity fly free and remain innovative. Remaining silent towards
Fayadh’s detention is an insult to knowledge, literature, culture, and
thought as well as to freedom and human rights.”

Samidoun
Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins the call for the immediate
freedom of Ashraf Fayadh. His imprisonment, persecution and death
sentence by the Saudi regime reflects the deeply reactionary and
far-right role played by the Saudi regime in the region—alongside its
close imperial partners in the United States, Canada and Europe—that
threatens Palestinian and Arab culture, life, and movements and works to
block and suppress any struggle for liberation.

2.
Protest at the Saudi Embassy in your area for freedom for Ashraf
Fayadh. Print signs and materials, and gather outside the Saudi embassy
with Palestine rights activists, artists and others to demand his
freedom. See the list of Saudi embassies here: http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/saudi-arabia

3.
Contact your government officials. The Saudi regime is a close partner
of the United States, Canadian and various European governments. Demand
that your government pressure the Saudi regime to release Fayadh. In
Canada, Call the office of the Foreign Minister, Stéphane Dion, at
613-996-5789 and demand Canada pressure Saudi Arabia to release Fayadh,
or email: stephane.dion@parl.gc.ca.
In the U.S., call the White House (202-456-1111) and the U.S. State
Department (202-647-9572); demand the U.S. pressure Saudi Arabia to
release Fayadh. In the EU, contact your Member of the European
Parliament—you can find your MEP here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html

Please
also write letters, Facebook posts, emails or send Facebook messages to
your local politicians, newspapers and friends to publicize this dire
case and spread the information about the situation of Ashraf Fayadh.

Urge
Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has
always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which
he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting
opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute
an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin
Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human
Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful
conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial
misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case.
Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge
William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In
1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house
guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in
an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a
noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the
venue of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following
his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this
politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In
2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime
that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the
state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin
Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

Kevin
Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row
Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be
repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers
Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed
by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District
Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT
and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the
Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the
Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be
aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to
be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.

Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin
Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and
sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in
Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter
Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year
old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted
in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin
Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He
has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a
dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d
581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:


The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the
murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a
hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could
a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four
weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were
adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near
their bedsides?

 The sole surviving victim of the
murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the
murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated
this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr.
Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said
"that's not the man who did it."

 Josh Ryen's
description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were
driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported
seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of
the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.


These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees
and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men
enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom
were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.


The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman
who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's
department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left
blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also
reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a
tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She
also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one
recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in
the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister
saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could
have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking
a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution
claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a
minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But
the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the
driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The
prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and
credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder
scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days
before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had
been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to
convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at
trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been
discredited… (Continue reading this document at:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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For Immediate Release – Thursday, October 29, 2015

Solitary Prisoners' Lawyers Slam CDCR for Sleep Deprivation

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

SAN
FRANCISCO – Yesterday, lawyers for prisoners in the class action case
Ashker v. Brown submitted a letter condemning Pelican Bay prison
guards' "wellness checks," which have widely been viewed as sleep
deprivation. The letter was submitted to United States Magistrate Judge
Nandor Vadas, and calls on the California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to put an end to the checks.

Last
month, prisoners achieved a historic victory in the settlement of
Ashker v. Brown where the indefinite long term solitary confinement was
effectively ended in California, with Magistrate Judge Vadas currently
monitoring implementation of the settlement terms.

The
guards at Pelican bay Security Housing Units have been conducting
disruptive cell checks every 30 minutes around the clock for three
months, causing prisoners widespread sleep disruption. The process is
loud and according to prisoners, "the method and noise from the checks
is torture."

Attorneys representing Pelican Bay SHU
prisoners have just completed extensive interviews with prisoners who
demand that "the every 30-minute checks have to be stopped or people
are going to get sick or worse." In addition, they report that regular
prison programs have been negatively impacted.

"To
sleep is a fundamental human right," said Anne Weills, a member of the
prisoners' legal team and one of the attorneys who conducted the
interviews with prisoners in Pelican Bay. "To take away such a basic
human right amounts to severe torture, adding to the already torturous
conditions of being in solitary confinement."

Most
prisoners report low energy, exhaustion and fatigue. Most state that
they have trouble concentrating. They try to read, but they nod off
and/or can't remember what they have read. Their writing is much slower
("I can't think to write"), and describe the constant welfare checks as
having a negative impact on their mental state.

While
this recent attorney survey was specifically focusing on sleep
deprivation and its effects, prisoners volunteered information about
the negative impact of these frequent checks: yard policy and practice
has reduced access to recreation, access to showers has been reduced,
programs and meals are being delayed, and property for those newly
transferred to Pelican Bay is still being delayed and withheld.

Sleep
deprivation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Prisoners and
their attorneys are demanding that these checks be halted.

Free Albert Woodfox!

On
June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox
unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned
three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has
appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind
bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement.
He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert
King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their
activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party.
Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is
time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice.
Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and
unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Amnesty for ALL those arresteddemanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is
now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about
broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of
Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in
arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the
National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops
in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the
Baltimore Uprising.

I
stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all
charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police
brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case
of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for
this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no
indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful
protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth
who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given
an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and
justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the
windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should
work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than
criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions.
Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos

Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:

Americans
now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that
money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing
burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank
you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful
convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To
garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at
work updating the website and developing an even more formidable and
dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During
the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington
Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry
Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these
articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system,
which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I
hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm
still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website
being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new
provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep
everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I
would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the
MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence.
Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I
get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay
engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has
changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by
my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the
mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and
prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would
think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my
actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At
the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin
County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the
20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short
call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his
attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from
representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is
seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated
multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us
being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor
Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he
has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent
Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to
prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to
speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going
to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're
willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in
warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately,
you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had
me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers
to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the
back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my
education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be
certified in different work.

The month of the hearing
has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one
of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our
pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up
to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted
me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the
country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything
counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom,
Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank
you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the
new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

Email: Through JPay using the code:
Lorenzo Johnson DF 1036 PA DOC
or
Directly at LorenzoJohnson17932@gmail.com

Have a wonderful day!
- The Team to Free Lorenzo Johnson

freelorenzojohnson.org

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Join the Fight to Free Rev. Pinkney!

Click HERE to view in browser

http://www.iacenter.org/prisoners/freepinkney-1-28-15/

On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval,
repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr.
Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV.
PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led
away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial
evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the
PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration
against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack
Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The
course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the
city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County
officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor
Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local
corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton
Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan
cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The
Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent
charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist
white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black
city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian
ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper
column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do
this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please
write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks'
whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea
Manning's release from military prison.

It is
important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that
Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be
reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner,
imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely
that any of these individuals would independently move to release
Manning, a reduction in Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is
a possibility at this stage.

The
letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and
especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's
sentence is reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this
will be unlikely to help.

A suggested message:
"Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military
regulations in the course of being true to her conscience. I urge you
to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time
served." Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the
details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider
composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this
yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This
clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal
before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's
new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the
prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial
at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!

CLEVELAND
— David Ayers says he feared for his life during the nearly 12 years he
spent in a prison for a murder that evidence showed he did not commit.

The
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit voided Mr. Ayers’s
conviction in 2010, and he was freed nearly a year later. A federal
jury in 2013 awarded him $13.2 million, a verdict upheld by the appeals
court.

But Mr. Ayers has not received a dime, and it is unclear if he will.

The
City of Cleveland says that it owes him nothing and that the judgment
was against the two homicide detectives who helped convict him, not the
city. It further argues that the judgment was erased in a bankruptcy
filed by one of the detectives.

It appears Cleveland is planning a
similar strategy over a $5.5 million verdict returned in September
against a police officer who fatally shot Kenny Smith outside a
nightclub in 2012. That verdict has been appealed, but the city in
November hired a bankruptcy lawyer for the officer.

Lawyers for
Mr. Ayers’s and Mr. Smith’s families say they are outraged by the
practice. They say Ohio law requires municipalities to pay judgments for
employees sued for acts committed during their employment.

Ruth Brown, one of Mr. Ayers’s Chicago-based lawyers, calls the strategy unprecedented and a “blatant dodge.”

“Nobody’s ever heard of anything like this,” Ms. Brown said.

Terry
Gilbert, a lawyer for Mr. Smith’s family, said the city was required to
indemnify employees who have judgments filed against them.

“They’re desperate to find a way not to pay these verdicts and are engaging in legal shenanigans,” Mr. Gilbert said.

Cleveland
said it “does not have a policy of avoiding the payment of its legal
obligations, including judgments.” It said the judgments were against
individual police officers, not the city. It said in a statement Friday
that it had no obligation to pay Mr. Ayers after being dismissed from
his lawsuit.

While Cleveland has been hailed as a comeback city,
it is also under pressure to fix a troubled police department that has
cost the city millions of dollars in judgments and settlements of
lawsuits for abusive behavior by officers. Cleveland paid a total of $3
million in 2014 to the families of two unarmed people killed in a
137-shot barrage of police gunfire.

A jury convicted Mr. Ayers of
aggravated murder in December 2000 in the killing of a woman at an
apartment complex for the elderly where he worked as a security guard.
The conviction was based primarily on the testimony of the detectives
and a jailhouse informant who said Mr. Ayers had confessed.

Mr.
Ayers refused to accept two plea deals offered by prosecutors. Instead,
he went to trial, and he was convicted and sentenced to life
imprisonment. He was exonerated after it was learned that hairs found on
the victim’s body did not belong to him, that detectives had fed
information to the jailhouse informant and that the authorities had
failed to check surveillance camera footage that would have corroborated
his story about his whereabouts.

Mr. Ayers, 58, said he had feared for his life every day in prison.

“They
put me away and took away 11 years of life for something I’m completely
innocent of,” he said. “I think they should stop and pay me my money.”

Mr.
Smith was shot once in the head by an off-duty police officer, Roger
Jones. The officer told investigators that he had shot Mr. Smith when he
reached for a handgun in a car. He said Mr. Smith had gotten out of the
car after he was shot and had taken several steps before collapsing.

A
witness testified during a federal civil trial that Mr. Smith had been
outside the car and lowering himself to the ground when Officer Jones
shot him. A medical examiner testified that Mr. Smith had been
immediately incapacitated and could not have taken any steps.

The
Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Tim McGinty, called Officer Jones a hero
after a grand jury cleared him of charges. After the $5.5 million jury
verdict, Mr. McGinty said his office would re-examine the shooting.

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2) Sixty-Two People Now Have a Greater Net Worth Than Half the World's Population

As
the world's wealthy and powerful gather this week in Davos,
Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, research has revealed the
richest 1 percent of the world's population now own more than the rest
of the population combined.

An Economy for the 1%, a report by
anti-poverty NGO Oxfam, said although the number of people living in
extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income
of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3 a year in the past
quarter of a century.

An even starker figure was the charity's
finding that just 62 people — 53 of them men — own as much wealth as
half the world's population. This figure has fallen from 388 five years
ago.

The wealth of the poorest half of the world's population —
more than 3.6 billion people — has fallen by a trillion dollars (41
percent) since 2010. Meanwhile the value of the richest 62 people has
increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion.

"Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate," the report said.

There
has been some criticism of Oxfam's figures, as the charity uses
individuals' net worth to make its calculations — assets minus debts.
This means that a person living on a few dollars a day who has no debt
ends up being classed as wealthier than a person who has a reasonable
income but hundreds of thousands of dollars in mortgage and student
debt.

But while such anecdotes were eye-catching and made sense
on an individual level, "at a macro level they are not relevant, they
are not powerful," Deborah Hardoon, a lead author of the report, told
VICE News. "They do not affect the trend we are highlighting which is
the fact that the vast majority of wealth goes straight to the top."

Having
a lot of debt could seriously impact an individual's well-being,
Hardoon added. "It's necessary to have a certain degree of security if
you're faced with a shock such as a medical bill, or a poor harvest,"
she said. "if you have zero or negative wealth then your ability and
robustness to respond is very poor."

The really major issue was
what is being done with all wealth at the top, said Hardoon. "You only
have to look at the money in lobbying and financing to know that extreme
wealth and extreme influence go hand in hand. The extremely wealthy
have power to influence policies, economic systems, and environmental
policy that affect all of us."

Oxfam also highlighted the "global
spider's web" of tax havens that allows this wealth to stays out of
reach of ordinary citizens and governments. Its report pointed out that 9
out of 10 of this year's World Economic Forum corporate partners have a
presence in at least one tax haven.

It is estimated that $7.6
trillion of individuals' wealth — a twelfth of the global total — sits
offshore, said the report. If tax were paid on the income that wealth
generates, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every
year, it said.

The report notes that corporate investment in tax havens almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.

"Tax
havens are at the heart of a global system that allows large
corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share,
depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to
provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality," said
Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America.

"It's a
major wake-up call," said Jyrki Raina, general secretary of IndustriALL
Global Union, which represents 50 million workers in 140 countries in
the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors. "Inequality is one of the
biggest threats to economic well-being and it needs to be addressed."

Several
members of the Justice for Mario Woods Coalition began to shout over
the mayor’s speech at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where
hundreds had gathered in honor of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.

“We want to make sure that you know that your police chief needs to be fired,” protester Sellassie Blackwell shouted.

Many
protesters expressed that if King were alive today, the trailblazing
civil rights leader would stand with their cause to get justice for
Woods and others in the black community they say have been victims of
excessive force and police brutality.

In that regard, the
coalition has called for the firing of Police Chief Greg Suhr and the
criminal prosecution of five police officers who shot and killed Woods,
26, in December. They also want an independent investigation into the
fatal shooting.

“It’s more than just police officers it’s also
about affordability,” Lee told the crowd before his voice was again
drowned out by the coalition. “It’s about a city that represents and
builds housing for its residents.”

But Blackwell and the other
Woods supporters, including local rapper Ilyich Sato — known to many as
Equipto — told the mayor that King would not approve of his actions. The
coalition invited Lee to speak with them and promised to hassle him
until he listened to their demands.

“I appreciate you’re
listening to me,” Lee said to protesters as they shouted over him. “May I
speak?” Lee then thanked the audience and left the stage to applause.

Outside
protesters began to chant, “Fire Chief Suhr,” and waited for the mayor
to try and exit through a side door. But he never came out.

The
coalition wrote a letter to Lee that they planned to hand him. A copy of
the note obtained by the San Francisco Examiner read: “How can you
continue to support Chief Suhr? If his long and sordid history is not
enough, how much more will it take before you fire Chief Suhr?”

With
the letter, the coalition attached a list of the scandals in which Suhr
has been involved, including the racist text messages sent between
officers under his command and the various men who have been killed
while Suhr was chief.

The Interfaith Council meeting was but one
of several disruptions caused by protesters throughout the holiday
Monday. During the early evening, protesters shut down of the eastern
span of the Bay Bridge.

Third Street in the South of Market
neighborhood was closed to traffic while demonstrators, including
Officers for Justice, marched down the middle of the road near Mission
Street.

“We’re outraged about the last ruling of the textgate
scandal,” said San Francisco police Sgt. Yolanda Williams of Officers
For Justice.

At Yerba Buena Gardens, community members showed
their support for Pastor Yul Dorn, who was evicted from his home last
Thursday after living there for 20 years.

“It is absolutely
criminal what our system is allowing these spectators and the mayor to
do to people, especially to people of color,” Dorn said. “We’re low
hanging fruit. We don’t have the money to get high-priced lawyers, they
do. And so we basically just have to be displaced.”

Monday morning, Sato spoke out loud during another public celebration of King at a San Francisco Labor Council breakfast.

A
line of police prevented coalition protesters from entering the Holiday
Inn on Van Ness Avenue and Pine Street around 8 a.m., where the event
was underway.

But several protesters from the coalition had
purchased tickets to the breakfast in advance. Between speakers, Sato
hopped up stage and took over the microphone, he said.

Sato’s
speech prompted an organizer with the Labor Council to invite the rest
of the Woods protesters, who were stuck outside the hotel behind a
police line, inside the meeting.

“We were outside speaking our
demands to police officers who were laughing at us,” Yayne Abeba, a
member of the coalition, told the crowd at the meeting.

Once
inside, the protesters were invited on stage by Rev. Cecil Williams of
Glide Memorial Methodist Church, who told them, “You have a great cause.
Don’t go against your own.”

“Cecil invited us all up to share our story,” said Felicia Jones of SEIU 1021 and the Woods coalition. “It was powerful.”

Blackwell read the coalition’s demands to the unions and elected officials that filled the audience.

“We came in as the opposition,” Blackwell said. “And we ended up leaving as the highlight.”

Welcome
to the world’s inequality countdown. In 2010, some 388 people owned as
much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Jump to 2014
and that 388 is down to 85 people. In 2015 the figure was 80 and now
today Oxfam has revealed that 62 rich individuals own as much wealth as
the poorest 3.6 billion people.

If this deeply alarming
inequality clock continues to tick as fast, by 2020, a mere 11 people
could have the same wealth as half the world. That’s not even a dozen.

This
extreme inequality is not a sign of a healthy global economy as all the
wealth is being sucked up by those at the dizzying top. Trickle-down
economics is a fallacy—this is not just Oxfam’s view but that of the World Bank also.
The rich can no longer pretend their wealth benefits the rest of us. It
doesn’t: it harms us. The only thing that’s “trickling down” is
inequality, and powerlessness.

The consequences of this extreme
economic inequality are far reaching. If inequality is not dealt with,
we could see more social unrest across the world, a brake on growth and
all the work that has been done in the last quarter century on poverty
halted—potentially reversed.

Unstable unequal world

What this
means to you and me is a more unstable, unequal world with fewer people
able to escape poverty. The world’s most unequal region is still Latin America, despite income inequality there falling in recent years.

In
2014, the richest ten percent of people in Latin America had amassed 71
percent of the region’s wealth. If this trend continues, according to
Oxfam’s calculations, in only six years the region’s richest one percent
will have more wealth than the 99 percent.

Meanwhile,
inequality in Asia has risen by as much as 18 percent since the
mid-1990s. Had this rise not happened, 240 million people across Asia
could have escaped poverty.

In Africa, four million children’s
lives could be saved each year if 30 percent of Africa’s wealth was not
held in tax havens. This means an estimated $14-billion is lost in tax
revenues each year, a sum that could pay for life-saving healthcare for
African mothers and children, and employ enough teachers to get every
African child into school.

Across the world, Oxfam is seeing
devastating impacts on the people we work with. But it doesn’t have to
be this way. Inequality is not inevitable.

Oxfam has done the
analysis and we have some of the solutions. What we need—what the world
needs—is more action on dealing with extreme inequality and there has
been some progress, but not enough.

In 2015, we saw the
Sustainable Development Goals on extreme poverty and inequality
enshrined. We also saw G20 governments agreeing on measures to curb tax
dodging by multinational companies, but these reforms don’t go far
enough in ensuring governments receive the taxes they are due. So more
does need to happen, especially as tax havens are becoming an ever more
common way of doing business.

The leaders of some of these
multinational companies will be attending this week’s World Economic
Forum in Davos. Oxfam has found that nine out of ten WEF corporate
partners have a presence in at least one tax haven and it is estimated
that tax dodging by multinational corporations across the world costs
developing countries at least $100-billion every year. Corporate
investment in tax havens almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.

Era of tax havens

That’s
why I am going to Davos to challenge governments, companies and elites
to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling
economic inequality and preventing hundreds-of-millions of people
lifting themselves out of poverty.

And it is also why Oxfam has released “An Economy for the 1%” just before this year’s Davos. This research has led to tax havens being at the top of our Inequality To Do list.

Tax
may be boring to some, but the figures are eye watering. Roughly $7.6
trillion of individuals’ wealth sits offshore. If tax were paid on the
incomes this wealth generates, we are looking at an extra $190-billion
for governments to spend on services that are essential for a
functioning society, such as schools and hospitals.

We need to
end the era of tax havens if we are to stop the inequality countdown.
For the benefit of all of us, our governments—that are meant to
represent our interests—need to shun the vested interests of the richest
by stopping the race to the bottom on tax and pulling back the curtains
on shady financial dealings.

GONFREVILLE-L’ORCHER, France — The French rapper Médine’s songs are full of wordplay and jarring twists.In one video,
a woman who appears to be wearing a burqa whips around to reveal a
nun’s habit — and a sign reading, “No burqa,” a wry comment on France’s
ban on conservative Muslim dress. A cake marked “halal,” when sliced
open by a woman dressed to symbolize France, reveals layers in the
colors of the national flag, signaling that Muslims can be French, too.

While
such satire is often celebrated in France, Médine, a Muslim of Algerian
descent, has found himself accused of being a fundamentalist and
failing to respect the basic principles of the republic. In contrast to
the respect accorded to the irreverent cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo,
the satirical newspaper that was the target of a terrorist attack last
year, he said, his work is “looked on with the condescension that is
reserved for everything coming from the housing projects.”For more than
30 years, since rap made its way here from America, France has had a
subculture of hip-hop artists like Médine, often referred to as “rappers
with a conscience.” Most of them are of Arab or African descent, and
they pride themselves on giving voice to the millions who make their
lives in isolated low-income housing projects. They are now clashing
perhaps more than ever with the country’s expanding far right and its
vituperative denunciation of migrants and relentless hostility toward
Muslims.

As a group, the rappers paint a sorry picture of France.
No quaint streets, warm baguettes or cafes are to be found in their
videos. They dance amid graffiti and broken glass, treeless streets and
rows of bland buildings in the background.

They sing about being
shut out. They plead for acceptance. They mourn the violence in their
midst, the constant police checks and the boredom of joblessness.

France
is the second-largest market for rap after the United States. Experts
say that about half of French young people, no matter their ethnic
heritage or socioeconomic status, listen to hip-hop. The political
rappers — in addition to Médine, the more prominent ones include Kery
James, Youssoupha, Axiom, Oxmo Puccino and Abd Al Malik
— generally get less airtime on the radio than the more American-style
“gangsta” rappers, who exist here, too. But experts say the political
rappers have a particular following among France’s poorest youth.

In the basement of a community center here, Médine said his song “Don’t Laïk,” whose video featured the nun, was actually meant to champion France’s secularism laws, which were intended to give people room to practice their religion.

The
title of the song is a mash-up of the French word for secularism,
“laïcite,” and the English “don’t like.” In it he mentions Nietzsche and
ancient Catholic exorcisms, and suggests that polygamists might be
better people than Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the libertine former head of
the International Monetary Fund who resigned amid a sex scandal.

“What evil has found a home in the body of Lady Secularism?” he rapped. “Speak your name.”

But
far from receiving a defense of his right to pillory a trend in which
small-town officials have barred veiled women from visiting beaches and
chaperoning school trips, his work, he said, came under attack.

Within
weeks of its release last year, “Don’t Laïk” had been viewed more than a
million times on YouTube and, Médine said, he and three of his friends
were being investigated on tax evasion accusations. The experience, he
said, was sort of funny, sort of intimidating.

Like many others,
he fears that those who live in the housing projects in the inner
suburbs, known as banlieues, will feel a backlash from the terrorist attacks in Paris last year. As one measure of the hysteria, some point to the reaction by the director Mathieu Kassovitz to the November attacks, in which 130 people were killed in and around Paris.

Mr.
Kassovitz, whose 1995 movie “La Haine” (“Hatred”) is considered a
groundbreaking effort to portray the social ills of the housing
projects, posted on Twitter that Muslims had to rise up and stop
jihadists or, essentially, they deserved what they got. One respondent
answered that he could not even get his girlfriend to call him back; how
was he supposed to stop the terrorists? Mr. Kassovitz later apologized
and took down the post.

Médine, 32, lives in the western port
city of Le Havre, where he was born and raised in the housing projects,
and still makes music with childhood buddies. If his singing persona is
hard-edge, in person he has a boyish, easygoing manner. Taking a break
from recording his latest album, he settled on a leather couch in the
basement of a community center here and sighed at the thought of what
else the coming year might bring.

“We will be hit now by a new wave of stigmatization,” he said, “of anti-Islam and all that goes with that.”

Still,
Médine said, he has no intention of lowering his voice. He said he had
just finished a song about what he believed was the irresponsible role
of the political elite in fanning tensions throughout the country.

While
many hip-hop artists might seem more focused on establishing clothing
lines, the political rappers in France are more likely to be associated
with neighborhood cultural foundations or funds to provide scholarships.
And just as the career of the French politician is incomplete without
producing a written volume or two, many French political rappers pen
books as well.

Médine’s book, named after his 2008 album, “Don’t
Panik,” was co-written with a French intellectual, Pascal Boniface. It
is a broad discussion between the two, intended, he said, to tone down
the mounting fears in France surrounding the young people from the
banlieues: Muslims, immigrants and even rappers.

An older rapper,
Axiom, 40, has a book titled “I Have a Dream,” a brief biography that
pays homage to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and urges the
inhabitants of the projects to step up and take charge of their future.

Yet,
after the attacks in Paris in November, in which 10 of his friends were
mowed down by the terrorists, he said it was the wrong time to engage
the French in a political discussion. Instead, he released “Ludo,” an ode to his childhood friend Ludovic Boumbas, 40, who died trying to protect someone else.

“I decided long ago, never speak out at times like this,” he said. “If you do, you are taken for the enemy.”

If
asked, however, Axiom has plenty to say. He calls the situation in the
suburbs apartheid. Being unemployed, he said, is “not like a vacation.
It is a humiliation. Add to that the humiliation of having your
identification papers checked constantly. And the humiliation of not
being able to get into a discothèque. And the humiliation of the way
that people look at you when that happens.”

All this, he added, and you are “expected to accept it without ever rebelling.”

Three
years ago, Kery James, 38, a Muslim who was born in Guadeloupe,
released “A Letter to the Republic.” In that song he chides France for
“never knowing charity,” for the constant suggestion by some that it is
being invaded and sullied by Arabs and Africans, when so many were
brought there as cheap labor.

These days, Mr. James, who gives
concerts to raise money for scholarships, regrets that strident tone,
saying that a more hopeful message might have done more good.

Médine
said he wrote first to keep the youth in the housing projects from
losing hope and withdrawing from society. But he worried that France is
far behind in preventing Muslim fanaticism from taking root.

The
French school system, highly structured and unforgiving, has done little
to bend to the needs of the children living in the projects, he said.
Instead, he said, radical Muslim preachers and other fanatics have
gotten a grip on a generation of youth. “It will be very hard to undo
that.”

SA’IR,
West Bank — Raed Jaradat was 22, an accounting student from a
well-to-do family here, already working part time with his father in his
stone quarry and construction business. After Dania Ersheid, 17, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers who said she had pulled a knife at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a version disputed by Palestinians, Mr. Jaradat wrote an angry post on Facebook:
“Imagine if this were your sister!”Then Mr. Jaradat said he was going
to university in Hebron, gave his mother his gold bracelet and his
married sister his necklace, and went to a nearby Israeli military
checkpoint of Beit Anoun, where he stabbed and seriously wounded a
soldier before being shot to death himself.

Hours later, his
cousin Iyad Jaradat, 19, was killed at an angry demonstration at Beit
Anoun, hit in the head by a rubber-coated steel bullet.The cousins are
among 12 young Palestinians
killed over three months who were from this town of about 24,000
people, a few miles from the city of Hebron, a flash point. Sa’ir, with a
long history of resistance to Israel,
has become heralded in Palestinian lore as the hotbed of this latest
wave of stabbings and attempted stabbings by young people.

The
Jaradats’ deaths in October are part of the cyclical violence
increasingly being called a third intifada, one bubbling like lava with
little organization or strategy from a weak Palestinian leadership and
spilling around Israeli political and security officials’ attempts to
curtail it.

On Sunday alone, for example, Dafna Meir, an Israeli
mother of six, was stabbed to death in her home in a settlement just
south of Hebron (a 15-year-old Palestinian boy was later arrested),
and Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian who attempted a stabbing near
Nablus and arrested a Palestinian woman they said had approached a
checkpoint with a knife.

As Raed Jaradat’s heartbroken father,
Sakit, spoke last week in his large home — which has already been
measured for retaliatory demolition by Israeli troops as part of a
revival of a deterrence policy largely abandoned in 2005 — a funeral was
underway for Moyyad Jabarin, 19. in Sa’ir’s little Cemetery of the
Martyr. Mr. Jabarin, a plumber, had been killed at the Beit Anoun
checkpoint after trying to stab a soldier.

“We live well; my son
needed nothing,” said Sakit Jaradat, 53. “But the only thing missing in
the lives of these youths is freedom. They have lost hope and dignity,
they are humiliated at the checkpoints, and now we are afraid. I tell my
family to go through checkpoints in groups, never alone. You can say
that safety and security have vanished from the lives of these young
people.”

Since Oct. 1, some 25 Israelis — along with an American
Jewish student and a Palestinian bystander — have been killed in
near-daily attacks by knife, vehicle and gunfire, along with 155
Palestinians, most of whom Israel describes as assailants. Some
Israelis, like the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, say this wave will
peter out when it produces no clear results. Others, like Isaac Herzog,
the leader of the opposition in Parliament, believe it is the beginning
of a third intifada.

Palestinian political leaders fear a harsher
crackdown by Israel and more useless sacrifice, but they embrace the
young dead as martyrs to the cause of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s
occupation of the West Bank,
accuse Israel of an excessive “shoot to kill” policy, which the
military strongly denies, and are under increasing pressure to act.

Sunday’s killing of the Israeli mother, in the settlement of Otniel, and a stabbing the next day of Michal Froman, a pregnant Israeli in the settlement of Tekoa, near Bethlehem, may represent another new phase in this round of violence,
with attacks inside the settlements themselves. But the suspect in the
Tekoa attack, a Palestinian 15-year-old who was shot and wounded, told
the police that a relative who tried to stab Israelis had been killed
two months earlier near Hebron, an echo of the now-familiar circular
story involving the Jaradats of Sa’ir.

Daoud al-Zaatari, Hebron’s
mayor, sees the violence as a “boiling up of anger from a young
generation who were born after Oslo,” the agreements of the mid-1990s
that set up the interim Palestinian Authority and were supposed to lead
to an independent Palestinian state.

“But now they and we find ourselves lost,” he said. “Travel is restricted, there are few jobs, and doors are closed.”

These
young people, he said, “are not political, but angry at the political
system that delivers them nothing.” The violence has sprung with “no
plan or strategy by the Palestinian Authority or Fatah,” he said,
referring to the party of the Palestinian Authority’s leader. “That’s
what makes things confusing, both for us and the Israelis.”

Israeli
military officials, speaking anonymously after interviewing assailants
and their families, see a long-term phenomenon that began with anger
about the fate of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City but has morphed
into a relatively intimate cycle of outrage and revenge.

In
Sa’ir, for example, most of the dead have come from two other extended
families: the Shelaldehs and the Qawazbehs. On Jan. 7 alone, three
Qawazbeh cousins were killed after they tried to stab soldiers who
approached them near the Gush Etzion Junction. The 16-year-old brother
of one of them was killed later that day at Beit Anoun after he tried to
avenge their deaths by stabbing soldiers, and then Muhammad Qawazbeh
met the same fate trying the same thing at the same checkpoint five days
later.

Sakit Jaradat said Raed was polite and respectful, “and I
swear, if I knew my son would carry out an attack, I would have bound
his hands with metal.”

He began to cry softly, and his youngest
son, Muhammad, 9, brought in a box of tissues. “They say when someone
dies, you start forgetting,” Mr. Jaradat said. “But with me, day by day I
miss him more.”

He spoke then of his Israeli friends and
customers from an earlier, happier time and said some of them had
telephoned him with their condolences. “But now all I see, and all these
youth see, are Israeli soldiers and settlers,” he said.

At his
son’s funeral, Mr. Jaradat met the father of the woman whose death Raed
Jaradat had sought to avenge, and “to ease everyone’s tension and
misery,” he said, he suggested a posthumous marriage. Some in the
conservative village consider the ceremony they conducted un-Islamic,
but Palestinians broadly have celebrated it as a macabre romance of
national sacrifice.

Shawan Jabarin, the director of the
Palestinian human rights group Al Haq and a relative of the plumber
buried Friday, said Sa’ir was well known from the 1970s for fighting
Israeli efforts to establish civilian administrative councils and is now
hemmed in by checkpoints designed to protect the Israeli settlements
around Hebron. The day of the plumber’s funeral, for example, the town
was reachable only by a circuitous route, and soldiers had raided the
place the night before, looking for potential attackers.

“The
politicians of both sides promised this Oslo generation, these youth of
16 to 22 or 23, many things — dignity, freedom, development — and
everything failed,” Mr. Jabarin said. “Because the political parties
failed, the Palestinian leadership failed, they take things into their
own hands against the occupation.

“It’s like a snowball,” he
added. “It starts with Raed Jaradat when he reacted to Dania on
Facebook. And then there was more reaction, and when the Israelis kill
anyone, and you see the funerals and the anger of the people, but the
young don’t take everything into account, they react.

“And now
it’s horrid, because the killing becomes routine, and no one family, no
one father or mother can give you a guarantee that their children will
not do something.”

More than 92,000 people made the perilous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year, one of the highest annual totals of the past decade, the United Nations
refugee agency said Tuesday. The agency said two-thirds of the people
arrived after March, when the conflict in Yemen began. Most were from Ethiopia or Somalia.
A spokesman for the agency, Adrian Edwards said that “many new arrivals
are misinformed about the severity of the conflict,” even though the
agency has warned of the dangers in Yemen. Mr. Edwards said that 95
people died during the crossings last year and that 36 people had
drowned already this year. Along with 2.5 million Yemenis displaced by
the conflict, Yemen hosts 266,000 refugees.

Michigan
governor Rick Snyder was informed of water quality issues in the city
of Flint’s supply as early as February 2015, according to emails
released to the public on Wednesday, but his administration struck a
dismissive tone, saying the problems would eventually “fade in the
rearview”.

A background memo sent to the governor on 1
February dismissed the pleas of Flint’s then mayor Dayne Walling for
state assistance, saying that the mayor had “seized on public panic … to
ask the state for loan forgiveness and more money for infrastructure
improvement”.

Flint’s water supply was contaminated by lead,
poisoning thousands of residents, after the source of the city’s
drinking water was switched from Detroit to the Flint river in April
2014. Water from the Flint River had for months corroded lead from the inside of water pipes in thousands of households across the city.

The
memo, which was among 274 pages of emails related to the city’s crisis,
also said that it was “clear that folks in Flint are concerned about
other aspects of their water – taste, smell and color being among the
top complaints”, but said that the Safe Drinking Water Act “does not
regulate aesthetic values of water”. The words “does not” were
underlined.

Though the February memo does not specifically
mention lead contamination, it does discuss the water quality problems
in Flint extensively, including how the city’s water had dangerously
high levels of a contaminant called total trihalomethanes, which can
lead to liver or kidney issues. Exposure wasn’t a “top health concern”,
the memo stated, as it only poses “a public health concern with chronic,
long-term exposure”.

It also talked about corrosion inside of
cast-iron pipes – the same process which led to the lead contamination –
which is mentioned as a cause of “the brown water that angry residents
were holding up in jugs for media cameras last week”. The memo
continued: “discoloration is not an indicator of water quality or water
safety, but we recognize that nobody likes it.” Advertisement

According
to David Murray, a spokesman for Snyder, the 1 February email was part
of preparations for a press conference to announce additional state
resources to help address concerns about the odour and colour of the
water in Flint. Murray added that the governor “did not become aware of
the severity of the problem with lead until October 1”, and that when he
did he responded “aggressively the next day”.

The 1 February
memo to Snyder concluded: “Another key thing to remember is that once
the city connects to the new [water] system in 2016, this issue will
fade in the rearview”, referring to a planned change to Lake Huron as a
source.

But later that month, an EPA employee raised
concerns for the first time with the Michigan department of
environmental quality about the city’s water source, the Flint river,
and high levels of lead in water – the beginnings of a crisis Snyder
wouldn’t publicly acknowledge until several months later.

Soon
after the memo was sent to Snyder, researchers and journalists
uncovered a fact that is now well-established: as a result of the
state’s failure to properly apply federal standards in treating the
Flint river, thousands of residents have been exposed to lead, a
neurotoxin that can produce long-term health effects, particularly in
young children.

Even then, the dismissive approach taken
toward Flint’s water quality was prevalent among key environmental
officials. In a 31 August email sent by a state environmental employee
to EPA officials, the growing concerns over lead in Flint were severely
downplayed as an issue the city was “probably not focusing on”.

“[The]
city has bigger issues on their agenda right now,” the state employee
wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Guardian through a public
records request, separately from the public release on Wednesday.

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On
26 September, Snyder’s then chief of staff Dennis Muchmore emailed the
governor to say that Flint’s water “certainly has occasional less than
savory aspects like color”, but said that the “anti everything group”
had turned to the lead content, and that “of course, some of the Flint
people respond by looking for someone to blame”.

A local
pediatrician eventually uncovered elevated blood lead levels in Flint
children after the city started using the Flint river. But officials
vehemently disputed the findings until, in October, Snyder said the
situation was far graver than he initially understood, and announced a
$12m plan to switch Flint back to its previous supply with Detroit.

Snyder, a Republican and former businessman, has said he accepts full responsibility for the crisis, emphasising that point in his state of the state speech on Tuesday.

“We
will not stop working for the people of Flint until every person has
clean water, every single day, no matter what,” the governor said on
Tuesday.

In the speech, the governor promised a $28m
additional aid package to expedite recovery efforts in Flint and said he
would release his emails from 2014 and 2015 on the city – but not 2013,
when the decision was made to use the local river.

President Barack Obama,
who this week met the newly elected Flint mayor, approved Snyder’s
request to declare a federal emergency in the city and provide an
additional $5m in financial assistance. The governor has also activated
the national guard and requested help from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.

“If I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kids’ health could be at risk,” Obama said in Detroit
on Wednesday. “And that’s why over the weekend I declared a federal
emergency in Flint to send more resources on top of what we’ve already
put on the ground.”

LANSING,
Mich. — A top aide to Michigan’s governor referred to people raising
questions about the quality of Flint’s water as an “anti-everything
group.” Other critics were accused of turning complaints about water
into a “political football.” And worrisome findings about lead by a
concerned pediatrician were dismissed as “data,” in quotes.

That
view of how the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder initially dealt with
the water crisis in the poverty-stricken, black-majority city of Flint
emerged from 274 pages of emails, made public by the governor on
Wednesday.

The correspondence records mounting complaints by the
public and elected officials, as well as growing irritation by state
officials over the reluctance to accept their assurances.It was not
until late in 2015, after months of complaints, that state officials
finally conceded what critics had been contending: that Flint was in the
midst of a major public health emergency, as tap water pouring into
families’ homes contained enough lead to show up in the blood of dozens
of people in the city. Even small amounts of lead could cause lasting
health and developmental problems in children.

The emails
were released late in the day, after Mr. Snyder’s State of the State
address Tuesday night in which he profusely apologized to the residents
of Flint and promised to help remedy the problem and get to the bottom
of how it occurred. The Michigan House on Wednesday approved $28 million
requested by the governor to assist the city.

Though Mr. Snyder
issued the emails as part of an effort to reveal the administration’s
transparency on the matter, the documents provide a glimpse of state
leaders who were at times dismissive of the concerns of residents,
seemed eager to place responsibility with local government and, even as
the scientific testing was hinting at a larger problem, were reluctant
to acknowledge it.

The messages show that from the moment Flint
decided to draw its water from a new source, the Flint River, officials
were discounting concerns about its quality and celebrating a change
meant to save the cash-starved city millions of dollars. From 2011 to
2015, Flint was in state receivership, its finances controlled by a
succession of four emergency managers appointed by Mr. Snyder’s
administration.

That upbeat mood lasted for months, even as
residents began complaining about the new water’s foul odor, odd color
and strange health effects, and began showing up at events with “jugs of
brownish water.”

A news release on April 25, 2014, from the City
of Flint announcing the change to the water source acknowledged, “Even
with a proven track record of providing perfectly good water for Flint,
there still remains lingering uncertainty about the quality of the
water” by the public.It went on to say that “in an effort to dispel
myths and promote the truth” there had been repeated tests of the water.
The release, which was shared with state officials, said that a state
expert verified that “the water being put out meets all of our drinking
water standards and Flint water is safe to drink.”

In October of
that year, a memo from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
addressing advisories for Flint residents to boil water still seemed to
minimize the possibility of any serious problem, instead blaming cold
weather, aging pipes and even the city’s population decline for the
advisories.

“The city has taken operational steps to limit the
potential for a boil water advisory to reoccur,” Stephen Busch, a
district supervisor for the state’s Department of Environmental Quality,
wrote.

In Michigan, public records laws do not require Mr.
Snyder to release his emails, but he was under heavy pressure to do so,
especially after an editorial in The Detroit Free Press over the weekend.

The crisis has had repercussions stretching to Washington and the Democratic presidential contest. Mr. Snyder is a Republican.

In
Washington on Wednesday, Flint’s mayor, Karen Weaver, who was attending
the Conference of Mayors, said such lead contamination would never have
been permitted had Flint been a rich suburb.

President Obama,
who met with Ms. Weaver on Tuesday and declined to visit Flint while
attending the annual car show in Detroit, also weighed in. He said that
he “would be beside myself” if he were a parent in Flint. In an
interview to be aired on CBS News on Sunday, Mr. Obama said, “The notion
that immediately families were not notified, things were not shut down —
that shouldn’t happen anywhere,”

Flint, led at the time by an
emergency manager who was appointed by the state to help solve the
city’s fiscal woes, switched water supplies in April 2014 — in part to
save money, which the emails showed amounted to $1 million to $2 million
a year.

For almost five decades, Flint drew its water from the
city of Detroit’s water system, but concerns about high prices from
Detroit helped lead to a switch. The city’s mayor at the time, Dayne
Walling, encouraged leaders to “toast” the switch with a taste of the
“regular, good, pure drinking” water, the governor’s emails show.

The
mood grew less upbeat as time went on. People talked about smells and
rashes. Residents carried jugs of brownish water to meetings. One state
legislator warned the governor in a letter that his constituents were
“on the verge of civil unrest.”

At points, the water was found to
have bacterial contamination, and then disinfectant used to kill the
bacteria caused a chemical contamination. Even after those problems were
resolved, many residents said the water was bad.

Still, officials seemed slow to respond. In one memo
for the governor from February 2015, officials played down the problems
and spoke of “initial hiccups.”

“It’s not ‘nothing,’ “ the memo
said, adding that the water was not an imminent “threat to public
health.” It also suggested that Flint residents were concerned with
aesthetics.

“It’s clear the nature of the threat was communicated
poorly,” the memo said. “It’s also clear that folks in Flint are
concerned about other aspects of their water — taste, smell and color
being among the top complaints.”

By September, state officials,
hearing new concerns about the possibility of lead in the water, seemed
eager to place responsibility for the pipes and the water firmly with
local authorities.

Two state agencies responsible for health and
environmental regulation “feel that some in Flint are taking the very
sensitive issue of children’s exposure to lead and trying to turn it
into a political football claiming the departments are underestimating
the impacts on the populations and particularly trying to shift
responsibility to the state,” Dennis Muchmore, then Mr. Snyder’s chief
of staff, wrote in a Sept. 25, 2015, email to the governor and the
lieutenant governor.

In the same email, he went on: “I can’t
figure out why the state is responsible except that Dillon did make the
ultimate decision so we’re not able to avoid the subject,” he said, in
an apparent reference to Andy Dillon, then the state treasurer.

One
memo to a state aide says an Environmental Protection Agency expert,
Miguel Del Toral, said in February and April 2015 that the state was
testing the water in a way that could profoundly understate the lead
levels.

According to the memo, Mr.
Del Toral had written: “Given the very high lead levels found at one
home and the preflushing happening in Flint, I’m worried that the whole
town may have much higher lead levels than the compliance results
indicated, since they are using preflushing ahead of their compliance
sampling.”

Julie Bosman reported from Lansing, and Monica Davey
and Mitch Smith from Chicago. Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from
Washington, and Richard Pérez-Peña and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from New
York.